St. George and St. Michael

G >> George MacDonald >> St. George and St. Michael

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When supper time came, lady Margaret took her again to the
dining-room, where there was much laughter over the story of the two
marquises, lord Worcester driving the joke in twenty different
directions, but so kindly that Dorothy, instead of being
disconcerted or even discomposed thereby, found herself emboldened
to take a share in the merriment. When the company rose, lady
Margaret once more led her to her own room, where, working at her
embroidery frame, she chatted with her pleasantly for some time.
Dorothy would have been glad if she had set her work also, for she
could ill brook doing nothing. Notwithstanding her quietness of
demeanour, amounting at times to an appearance of immobility, her
nature was really an active one, and it was hard for her to sit with
her hands in her lap. Lady Margaret at length perceived her
discomfort.

'I fear, my child, I am wearying you,' she said.

'It is only that I want something to do, madam,' said Dorothy.

'I have nothing at hand for you to-night,' returned lady Margaret.
'Suppose we go and find my lord;--I mean my own lord Herbert. I have
not seen him since we broke fast together, and you have not seen him
at all. I am afraid he must think of leaving home again soon, he
seems so anxious to get something or other finished.'

As she spoke, she pushed aside her frame, and telling Dorothy to go
and fetch herself a cloak, went into the next room, whence she
presently returned, wrapped in a hooded mantle. As soon as Dorothy
came, she led her along the corridor to a small lobby whence a stair
descended to the court, issuing close by the gate.

'I shall never learn my way about,' said Dorothy. 'If it were only
the staircases, they are more than my memory will hold.'

Lady Margaret gave a merry little laugh.

'Harry set himself to count them the other day,' she said. 'I do not
remember how many he made out altogether, but I know he said there
were at least thirty stone ones.'

Dorothy's answer was an exclamation.

But she was not in the mood to dwell upon the mere arithmetic of
vastness. Invaded by the vision of the mighty structure, its aspect
rendered yet more imposing by the time which now suited with it, she
forgot lady Margaret's presence, and stood still to gaze.

The twilight had deepened half-way into night. There was no moon,
and in the dusk the huge masses of building rose full of mystery and
awe. Above the rest, the great towers on all sides seemed by
indwelling might to soar into the regions of air. The pile stood
there, the epitome of the story of an ancient race, the precipitate
from its vanished life--a hard core that had gathered in the
vaporous mass of history--the all of solid that remained to witness
of the past.

She came again to herself with a start. Lady Margaret had stood
quietly waiting for her mood to change. Dorothy apologised, but her
mistress only smiled and said,

'I am in no haste, child. I like to see another impressed as I was
when first I stood just where you stand now. Come, then, I will show
you something different.'

She led the way along the southern side of the court until they came
to the end of the chapel, opposite which an archway pierced the line
of building, and revealed the mighty bulk of the citadel, the only
portion of the castle, except the kitchen-tower, continuing
impregnable to enlarged means of assault: gunpowder itself, as yet
far from perfect in composition and make, and conditioned by clumsy,
uncertain, and ill-adjustable artillery, was nearly powerless
against walls more than ten feet in thickness.

I have already mentioned that one peculiarity of Raglan was a
distinct moat surrounding its keep. Immediately from the outer end
of the archway, a Gothic bridge of stone led across this thirty-foot
moat to a narrow walk which encompassed the tower. The walk was
itself encompassed and divided from the moat by a wall with six
turrets at equal distances, surmounted by battlements. At one time
the sole entrance to the tower had been by a drawbridge dropping
across the walk to the end of the stone bridge, from an arched door
in the wall, whose threshold was some ten or twelve feet from the
ground; but another entrance had since been made on the level of the
walk, and by it the two ladies now entered. Passing the foot of a
great stone staircase, they came to the door of what had, before the
opening of the lower entrance, been a vaulted cellar, probably at
one time a dungeon, at a later period a place of storage, but now
put to a very different use, and wearing a stranger aspect than it
could ever have borne at any past period of its story--a look indeed
of mystery inexplicable.

When Dorothy entered she found herself in a large place, the form of
which she could ill distinguish in the dull light proceeding from
the chinks about the closed doors of a huge furnace. The air was
filled with gurglings and strange low groanings, as of some creature
in dire pain. Dorothy had as good nerves as ever woman, yet she
could not help some fright as she stood alone by the door and stared
into the gloomy twilight into which her companion had advanced. As
her eyes became used to the ruddy dusk, she could see better, but
everywhere they lighted on shapes inexplicable, whose forms to the
first questioning thought suggested instruments of torture; but
cruel as some of them looked, they were almost too strange,
contorted, fantastical for such. Still, the wood-cuts in a certain
book she had been familiar with in childhood, commonly called Fox's
Book of Martyrs, kept haunting her mind's eye--and were they not
Papists into whose hands she had fallen? she said to herself, amused
at the vagaries of her own involuntary suggestions.

Among the rest, one thing specially caught her attention, both from
its size and its complicated strangeness. It was a huge wheel
standing near the wall, supported between two strong uprights--some
twelve or fifteen feet in diameter, with about fifty spokes, from
every one of which hung a large weight. Its grotesque and threatful
character was greatly increased by the mingling of its one substance
with its many shadows on the wall behind it. So intent was she upon
it that she started when lady Margaret spoke.

'Why, mistress Dorothy!' she said, 'you look as if you had wandered
into St. Anthony's cave! Here is my lord Herbert to welcome his
cousin.'

Beside her stood a man rather under the middle stature, but as his
back was to the furnace this was about all Dorothy could discover of
his appearance, save that he was in the garb of a workman, with bare
head and arms, and held in his hand a long iron rod ending in a
hook.

'Welcome, indeed, cousin Vaughan!' he said heartily, but without
offering his hand, which in truth, although an honest, skilful, and
well-fashioned hand, was at the present moment far from fit for a
lady's touch.

There was something in his voice not altogether strange to Dorothy,
but she could not tell of whom or what it reminded her.

'Are you come to take another lesson on the cross-bow?' he asked
with a smile.

Then she knew he was the same she had met in the looped chamber
beside the arblast. An occasional slight halt, not impediment, in
his speech, was what had remained on her memory. Did he always dwell
only in the dusky borders of the light?

Dorothy uttered a little 'Oh!' of surprise, but immediately
recovering herself, said,

'I am sorry I did not know it was you, my lord. I might by this time
have been capable of discharging bolt or arrow with good aim in
defence of the castle.'

'It is not yet too late, I hope,' returned the workman-lord. 'I
confess I was disappointed to find your curiosity went no further. I
hoped I had at last found a lady capable of some interest in
pursuits like mine. For my lady Margaret here, she cares not a straw
for anything I do, and would rather have me keep my hands clean than
discover the mechanism of the primum mobile!

'Yes, in truth, Ned,' said his wife, 'I would rather have thee with
fair hands in my sweet parlour, than toiling and moiling in this
dirty dungeon, with no companion but that horrible fire-engine of
thine, grunting and roaring all night long.'

'Why, what do you make of Caspar Kaltoff, my lady?'

'I make not much of him.'

'You misjudge his goodfellowship then.'

'Truly, I think not well of him: he always hath secrets with thee,
and I like it not.'

'That they are secrets is thine own fault, Peggy. How can I teach
thee my secrets if thou wilt not open thine ears to hear them?'

'I would your lordship would teach me!' said Dorothy. 'I might not
be an apt pupil, but I should be both an eager and a humble one.'

'By St. Patrick! mistress Dorothy, but you go straight to steal my
husband's heart from me. "Humble," forsooth! and "eager" too! Nay!
nay! If I have no part in his brain, I can the less yield his
heart.'

'What would be gladly learned would be gladly taught, cousin,' said
lord Herbert.

'There! there!' exclaimed lady Margaret; 'I knew it would be so. You
discharge your poor dull apprentice the moment you find a clever
one!'

'And why not? I never was able to teach thee anything.'

'Ah, Ned, there you are unkind indeed!' said lady Margaret, with
something in her voice that suggested the water-springs were
swelling.

'My shamrock of four!' said her husband in the tenderest tone, 'I
but jested with thee. How shouldst thou be my pupil in anything I
can teach? I am yours in all that is noble and good. I did not mean
to vex you, sweet heart.'

''Tis gone again, Ned,' she answered, smiling. 'Give cousin Dorothy
her first lesson.'

'It shall be that, then, to which I sought in vain to make thee
listen this very morning--a certain great saying of my lord of
Verulam, mistress Dorothy. I had learnt it by heart that I might
repeat it word for word to my lady, but she would none of it.'

'May I not hear it, madam?' said Dorothy.

'We will both hear it, Herbert, if you will pardon your foolish wife
and admit her to grace.' And as she spoke she laid her hand on his
sooty arm.

He answered her only with a smile, but such a one as sufficed.

'Listen then, ladies both,' he said. 'My lord of Verulam, having
quoted the words of Solomon, "The glory of God is to conceal a
thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out," adds thus, of
his own thought concerning them,--"as if," says my lord, "according
to the innocent play of children, the divine majesty took delight to
hide his works, to the end to have them found out, and as if kings
could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in
that game, considering the great commandment of wits and means,
whereby nothing needeth to be hidden from them."'

'That was very well for my lord of--what did'st thou call him, Ned?'

'Francis Bacon, lord Verulam,' returned Herbert, with a queer smile.

'Very well for my lord of Veryflam!' resumed lady Margaret, with a
mock, yet bewitching affectation of innocence and ignorance; 'but
tell me had he?--nay, I am sure he had not a wild Irishwoman sitting
breaking her heart in her bower all day long for his company. He
could never else have had the heart to say it.--Mistress Dorothy,'
she went on, 'take the counsel of a forsaken wife, and lay it to thy
heart: never marry a man who loves lathes and pipes and wheels and
water and fire, and I know not what. But do come in ere bed-time,
Herbert, and I will sing thee the sweetest of English ditties, and
make thee such a sack-posset as never could be made out of old
Ireland any more than the song.'

But her husband that moment sprang from her side, and shouting
'Caspar! Caspar!' bounded to the furnace, reached up with his iron
rod into the darkness over his head, caught something with the
hooked end of it, and pulled hard. A man who from somewhere in the
gloomy place had responded like a greyhound to his master's call,
did the like on the other side. Instantly followed a fierce,
protracted, sustained hiss, and in a moment the place was filled
with a white cloud, whence issued still the hideous hiss, changing
at length to a roar. Lady Margaret turned in terror, ran out of the
keep, and fled across the bridge and through the archway before she
slackened her pace. Dorothy followed, but more composedly, led by
duty, not driven by terror, and indeed reluctantly forsaking a spot
where was so much she did not understand.

They had fled from the infant roar of the 'first stock-father' of
steam-engines, whose cradle was that feudal keep, eight centuries
old.

That night Dorothy lay down weary enough. It seemed a month since she
had been in her own bed at Wyfern, so many new and strange things had
crowded into her house, hitherto so still. Every now and then the
darkness heaved and rippled with some noise of the night. The stamping
of horses, and the ringing of their halter chains, seemed very near her.
She thought she heard the howl of Marquis from afar, and said to
herself, 'The poor fellow cannot sleep! I must get my lord to let me
have him in my chamber.' Then she listened a while to the sweet flow of
the water from the mouth of the white horse, which in general went on
all night long. Suddenly came an awful sound--like a howl also, but such
as never left the throat of dog. Again and again at intervals it came,
with others like it but not the same, torturing the dark with a dismal
fear. Dorothy had never heard the cry of a wild beast, but the
suggestion that these might be such cries, and the recollection that she
had heard such beasts were in Raglan Castle, came together to her mind.
She was so weary, however, that worse noises than these could hardly
have kept her awake; not even her weariness could prevent them from
following her into her dreams.

CHAPTER XIV

SEVERAL PEOPLE

Lord Worcester had taken such a liking to Dorothy, partly at first
because of the good store of merriment with which she and her
mastiff had provided him, that he was disappointed when he found her
place was not to be at his table but the housekeeper's. As he said
himself, however, he did not meddle with women's matters, and indeed
it would not do for lady Margaret to show her so much favour above
her other women, of whom at least one was her superior in rank, and
all were relatives as well as herself.

Dorothy did not much relish their society, but she had not much of
it except at meals, when, however, they always treated her as an
interloper. Every day she saw more or less of lady Margaret, and
found in her such sweetness, if not quite evenness of temper, as
well as gaiety of disposition, that she learned to admire as well as
love her. Sometimes she had her to read to her, sometimes to work
with her, and almost every day she made her practise a little on the
harpsichord. Hence she not only improved rapidly in performance, but
grew capable of receiving more and more delight from music. There
was a fine little organ in the chapel, on which blind young
Delaware, the son of the marquis's master of the horse, used to play
delightfully; and although she never entered the place, she would
stand outside listening to his music for an hour at a time in the
twilight, or sometimes even after dark. For as yet she indulged
without question all the habits of her hitherto free life, as far as
was possible within the castle walls, and the outermost of these
were of great circuit, enclosing lawns, shrubberies, wildernesses,
flower and kitchen gardens, orchards, great fish-ponds, little lakes
with fountains, islands, and summer-houses--not to mention the
farmyard, and indeed a little park, in which were some of the finest
trees upon the estate.

The gentlewomen with whom Dorothy was, by her position in the
household, associated, were three in number. One was a rather
elderly, rather plain, rather pious lady, who did not insist on her
pretensions to either of the epithets. The second was a short,
plump, round-faced, good-natured, smiling woman of sixty,--excelling
in fasts and mortifications, which somehow seemed to agree with her
body as well as her soul. The third was only two or three years
older than Dorothy, and was pretty, except when she began to speak,
and then for a moment there was a strange discord in her features.
She took a dislike to Dorothy, as she said herself, the instant she
cast her eyes upon her. She could not bear that prim, set face, she
said. The country-bred heifer evidently thought herself superior to
every one in the castle. She was persuaded the minx was a sly one,
and would carry tales. So judged mistress Amanda Serafina Fuller,
after her kind. Nor was it wonderful that, being such as she was,
she should recoil with antipathy from one whose nature had a
tendency to ripen over soon, and stunt its slow orbicular expansion
to the premature and false completeness of a narrow and
self-sufficing conscientiousness.

Doubtless if Dorothy had shown any marked acknowledgment of the
precedency of their rights--any eagerness to conciliate the
aborigines of the circle, the ladies would have been more friendly
inclined; but while capable of endless love and veneration, there
was little of the conciliatory in her nature. Hence Mrs. Doughty
looked upon her with a rather stately, indifference, my lady
Broughton with a mild wish to save her poor, proud, protestant soul,
and mistress Amanda Serafina said she hated her; but then ever since
the Fall there has been a disproportion betwixt the feelings of
young ladies and the language in which they represent them. Mrs.
Doughty neglected her, and Dorothy did not know it; lady Broughton
said solemn things to her, and she never saw the point of them; but
when mistress Amanda half closed her eyes and looked at her in
snake-Geraldine fashion, she met her with a full, wide-orbed,
questioning gaze, before which Amanda's eyes dropped, and she sank
full fathom five towards the abyss of real hatred.

During the dinner hour, the three generally talked together in an
impregnable manner--not that they were by any means bosom-friends,
for two of them had never before united in anything except despising
good, soft lady Broughton. When they were altogether in their
mistress's presence, they behaved to Dorothy and to each other with
studious politeness.

The ladies Elizabeth and Anne, had their gentlewomen also, in all
only three, however, who also ate at the housekeeper's table, but
kept somewhat apart from the rest--yet were, in a distant way,
friendly to Dorothy.

But hers, as we have seen, was a nature far more capable of
attaching itself to a few than of pleasing many; and her heart went
out to lady Margaret, whom she would have come ere long to regard as
a mother, had she not behaved to her more like an elder sister. Lady
Margaret's own genuine behaviour had indeed little of the matronly
in it; when her husband came into the room, she seemed to grow
instantly younger, and her manner changed almost to that of a
playful girl. It is true, Dorothy had been struck with the dignity
of her manner amid all the frankness of her reception, but she soon
found that, although her nature was full of all real dignities, that
which belonged to her carriage never appeared in the society of
those she loved, and was assumed only, like the thin shelter of a
veil, in the presence of those whom she either knew or trusted less.
Before her ladies, she never appeared without some
restraint--manifest in a certain measuredness of movement, slowness
of speech, and choice of phrase; but before a month was over,
Dorothy was delighted to find that the reserve instantly vanished
when she happened to be left alone with her.

She took an early opportunity of informing her mistress of the
relationship between herself and Scudamore, stating that she knew
little or nothing of him, having seen him only once before she came
to the castle. The youth on his part took the first fitting
opportunity of addressing her in lady Margaret's presence, and soon
they were known to be cousins all over the castle.

With lady Margaret's help, Dorothy came to a tolerable understanding
of Scudamore. Indeed her ladyship's judgment seemed but a
development of her own feeling concerning him.

'Rowland is not a bad fellow,' she said, 'but I cannot fully
understand whence he comes in such grace with my lord Worcester. If
it were my husband now, I should not marvel: he is so much occupied
with things and engines, that he has as little time as natural
inclination to doubt any one who will only speak largely enough to
satisfy his idea. But my lord of Worcester knows well enough that
seldom are two things more unlike than men and their words. Yet that
is not what I mean to say of your cousin: he is no hypocrite--means
not to be false, but has no rule of right in him so far as I can
find. He is pleasant company; his gaiety, his quips, his readiness
of retort, his courtesy and what not, make him a favourite; and my
lord hath in a manner reared him, which goes to explain much. He is
quick yet indolent, good-natured but selfish, generous but counting
enjoyment the first thing,--though, to speak truth of him, I have
never known him do a dishonourable action. But, in a word, the star
of duty has not yet appeared above his horizon. Pardon me, Dorothy,
if I am severe upon him. More or less I may misjudge him, but this
is how I read him; and if you wonder that I should be able so to
divide him, I have but to tell you that I should be unapt indeed if
I had not yet learned of my husband to look into the heart of both
men and things.'

'But, madam,' Dorothy ventured to say, 'have you not even now told
me that from very goodness my lord is easily betrayed?'

'Well replied, my child! It is true, but only while he has had no
reason to mistrust. Let him once perceive ground for dissatisfaction
or suspicion, and his eye is keen as light itself to penetrate and
unravel.'

Such good qualities as lady Margaret accorded her cousin were of a
sort more fitted to please a less sedate and sober-minded damsel
than Dorothy, who was fashioned rather after the model of a puritan
than a royalist maiden. Pleased with his address and his behaviour
to herself as she could hardly fail to be, she yet felt a lingering
mistrust of him, which sprang quite as much from the immediate
impression as from her mistress's judgment of him, for it always
gave her a sense of not coming near the real man in him. There is
one thing a hypocrite even can never do, and that is, hide the
natural signs of his hypocrisy; and Rowland, who was no hypocrite,
only a man not half so honourable as he chose to take himself for,
could not conceal his unreality from the eyes of his simple country
cousin. Little, however, did Dorothy herself suspect whence she had
the idea,--that it was her girlhood's converse with real, sturdy,
honest, straight-forward, simple manhood, in the person of the
youth of fiery temper, and obstinate, opinionated, sometimes even
rude behaviour, whom she had chastised with terms of contemptuous
rebuke, which had rendered her so soon capable of distinguishing
between a profound and a shallow, a genuine and an unreal nature,
even when the latter comprehended a certain power of fascination,
active enough to be recognisable by most of the women in the castle.

Concerning this matter, it will suffice to say that lord
Worcester--who ruled his household with such authoritative wisdom
that honest Dr. Bayly avers he never saw a better-ordered
family--never saw a man drunk or heard an oath amongst his servants,
all the time he was chaplain in the castle,--would have been
scandalized to know the freedoms his favourite indulged himself in,
and regarded as privileged familiarities.

There was much coming and going of visitors--more now upon state
business than matters of friendship or ceremony; and occasional
solemn conferences were held in the marquis's private room, at which
sometimes lord John, who was a personal friend of the king's, and
sometimes lord Charles, the governor of the castle, with perhaps
this or that officer of dignity in the household, would be present;
but whoever was or was not present, lord Herbert when at home was
always there, sometimes alone with his father and commissioners from
the king. His absences, however, had grown frequent now that his
majesty had appointed him general of South Wales, and he had
considerable forces under his command--mostly raised by himself,
and maintained at his own and his father's expense.

It was some time after Dorothy had twice in one day met him
darkling, before she saw him in the light, and was able to peruse
his countenance, which she did carefully, with the mingled instinct
and insight of curious and thoughtful girlhood. He had come home
from a journey, changed his clothes, and had some food; and now he
appeared in his wife's parlour--to sun himself a little, he said.
When he entered, Dorothy, who was seated at her mistress's
embroidery frame, while she was herself busy mending some Flanders
lace, rose to leave the room. But he prayed her to be seated, saying
gayly,

'I would have you see, cousin, that I am no beast of prey that loves
the darkness. I can endure the daylight. Come, my lady, have you
nothing to amuse your soldier with? No good news to tell him? How is
my little Molly?'

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